White House Attempts To Justify Donald Trump’s Renewed Claim That Hurricane Dorian Would Hit Alabama
Donald Trump’s White House issued a lengthy defense on Thursday of the president’s claims that Alabama was in the path of Hurricane Dorian. Shortly after the president dug in yet again on his assertion that the “fake news” was trying to make him look bad by saying he was wrong about the path of the storm, Rear Admiral Peter Brown, a Homeland Security and counterterrorism adviser, claimed that he told the president that Alabama could be in the path of the storm, according to The Hill.
“These products showed possible storm impacts well outside the official forecast cone,” Brown said in his statement.
“While speaking to the press on Sunday, Sept. 1, the President addressed Hurricane Dorian and its potential impact on multiple states, including Alabama,” Brown said. “The president’s comments were based on that morning’s Hurricane Dorian briefing, which included the possibility of tropical storm force winds in southeastern Alabama.”
For the fourth day in a row, the president has insisted that Alabama was in the pathway of the hurricane, going to far as to invite Fox News into the Oval Office on Thursday to show them the forecasts that he was basing his statement off of. The images, which were provided by experts days before Trump announced to the country that Alabama was in the path of the storm, show that the state might experience some tropical force winds (about 39 mph). This map was updated with more accurate information by the time Trump tweeted on Sunday.
Just as I said, Alabama was originally projected to be hit. The Fake News denies it! pic.twitter.com/elJ7ROfm2p
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 5, 2019
Rather than issuing a retraction or an update, Trump doubled down on the incorrect data. In a statement provided in the Oval Office on Wednesday, the president pointed to a map that showed the hurricane moving along the southern United States from Friday and into Georgia. The map appeared to have been altered to extend the pathway into Alabama using a black marker, prompting intense mockery and backlash from the media, late-night comedians, and social media users.
On Thursday morning, as The Inquisitr reported, Trump repeated his claim.
“In the early days of the hurricane, when it was predicted that Dorian would go through Miami or West Palm Beach, even before it reached the Bahamas, certain models strongly suggested that Alabama & Georgia would be hit as it made its way through Florida & to the Gulf,” he wrote.
On Thursday, Brown came to the president’s defense, adding that Puerto Rico and Florida were on track to be impacted by the storm before it changed direction, intensifying the ongoing scrutiny over the president’s erroneous statement.
